American Go E-Journal » 2016 » July

The playing dates and deadline for sign ups to China Qiyuan’s new 2016 Gold Cup World Amateur Go Tournament, with online preliminaries for players outside of the major go countries to be held on Tygem, have been pushed back. The prelims will now take place starting August 8, with sign-ups allowed until August 2. “The prizes and playing opportunities for the players who make it past the prelims make it well worth trying,” said AGA President Andy Okun, who noted that the new playing dates no longer overlap with the European and US go congresses. The deadline for registration is August 2, 12 p.m. Beijing time; details and the registration form can be found here. The preliminaries will select 10 Chinese players, six Korean players and four from the rest of the world. Although competition can be expected to be rough, players down to 18 kyu are welcome to register. Winners of the online prelim will play face to face at the Xiamen Aqua Resort Hotel in Fujian from Sept. 14-19.

In addition to broadcasting US Open Masters top-board games on KGS as usual, the E-Journal broadcasting team will again this year video stream the US Open Masters top board on both the AGA’s YouTube and Twitch channels (check out the video trailer here) , both with live commentaries by professionals. Plus a couple extras as well…

Here’s the tentative line-up for this weekend’s broadcasts (plus a reminder of Saturday’s AlphaGo keynote), subject to change (we’ll keep you posted on Facebook and Twitter).

Team Relay Go will get a tryout next Tuesday night at the U.S. Go Congress. As previously reported (Team Relay Go the “Next Big Thing”?), Relay Go involves two teams of players playing one game. At the professional level, each team consists of a captain and 10 players; two players from each team start the game off, while the rest of their teams watch and discuss the game at a separate location. After a fixed number of moves, the next set of two players from each team tag in to continue the game and so on. “The beauty of Team Relay Go is in the team discussions of the ongoing game,” says Neil Ritter. “Players work together to understand the current board state with different views being shared and explored.”

Tuesday’s experiment is with an amateur version of Team Relay Go. “The goal is to give amateur players an idea of how a professional looks at a game,” Ritter says. The format will be a little different from Professional Team Relay Go. One game will still be played by two teams, but each team will be captained by two professional players, who will work to prepare the next pair of amateur players to be tagged into the game. The amateur players, fortified with pro knowledge, “will get tagged in and play some professional-level go … yeah, right!” laughs Ritter. “They’ll do their best and after the game is over the mess will be sorted through in review.”

There’s room for up to 48 players to participate in Tuesday’s Team Relay Go. Sign up at the ‘Events Sign Up Table’ next to Registration on Saturday, July 30, or email ritter.neil@gmail.com before midnight Monday, August 1. “This new event is only possible because of the professional players who have volunteered to be team captains,” notes Ritter, extending thanks to Mingjiu Jiang 9P, Feng Yun 9P, Yilun Yang 7P, William Shi 1P, Andy Liu 1P, Eric Lui 1P, Calvin Sun 1P, and Ryan Li 1P.

Zen Defeats Top Pro Cho Hye-Yeon 9P: Wednesday, July 27, 2016 became another historic date in the rapidly-developing history of computer go. Cho Hye-Yeon 9P, one of the strongest female players in the world, lost to the go playing program Zen in a two-stone handicap game. Unlike AlphaGo, which only a select few have had the chance to play, Zen bots can be easily found at KGS go server and have been seen in many computer go tournaments. Cho Hye-Yeon tried to play an active fighting style against Zen but the program calmly brought in the 1.5-point win. Click here for a video of the Cho Hye-Yeon game and her comments.

2017 Congress Confirmed for Turkey: Next year’s European Go Congress will go ahead as planned in Cappadocia, Turkey, despite concerns in the wake of recent attacks, the attempted coup and its aftermath. Turkish representatives received support from other countries’ representatives at the July 26 European Go Federation meeting, so it was decided not to change the location of the venue, a UNESCO world heritage site and beautiful historical place. Those interested can click here for info or to register. photo: Turkey’s Kerem Karaerkek registers go players for the 2017 EGC

Morozevich Bests Hillarp Persson in Go/Chess Match: The Go/chess match between Alexander Morozevich and Tiger Hillarp Persson was the spotlight of yesterday’s EGC program, with live coverage on the official Russian Go federation YouTube channel. The chess games were commented by Grandmaster Vladimir Fedoseev and the go games by Wu Hao 2P (China) and Alexander Dinerchtein 3P. Alexander Morozevich lost only the last go game and won the match 3-1. After the match he gave a chess simul where he lost only one game, to a German FIDE master Mike Stolz (2319 chess rating, 7kyu in go). Alexander Georgiev, several-time Draughts world champion, came to see the match and play the simul. He is a beginner at go too but plans to study the game.- Daria Koshkina, E-Journal Correspondent for the 2016 European Go Congress

Ed Lee sent in this great shot of “Me playing go with my friend Blake Haber. The place is Third Window Brewery in Santa Barbara, CA, where they brew and serve their own beers. I drink only root beer but today I tried a latte from a new coffee stand there.

“Blake’s girlfriend Michelle Dixon snapped the photo — unbeknownst to both Blake and me at the time. It was a 2-stone game, I took white. Judging from the white stone in Blake’s hand, I believe we were fighting the last half-point baby ko in yose. It was our usual wild and crazy game where I made a 40+ point blunder in mid-game, but miraculously the result was W+0.5 — I couldn’t believe it after we finished scoring.”

With congress right around the corner, the 2016 finalists for the Redmond Cup are gearing up for the championship matches. The first match of both the Senior (under 18) and Junior (under 13) divisions will be broadcast on KGS, Sunday 8/1 at 3 pm EDT. The Senior Division Finals will also be live-streamed on the AGA’s Youtube channel with professional commentary from Jennie Shen 2p and Lionel Zhang 6d. Tuesdays match will be commentated by Stephanie Mingming Yin 1p and Michael Chen 8d, if there is a third round in either division, Gansheng Shi 1p and Andrew Lu 7d will comment live on Thursday. The player profiles below will help EJ readers know who is who.

Leading the Senior Division is 14-year-old Jeremy Chiu 6d, from San Jose, California. He is looking to win his first Redmond Cup title after being the runner-up in the Junior Division in 2014 and coming out in first place in this year’s Senior Division preliminaries. He first learned about go from his Chinese school when he was 5-years old, and started taking classes shortly thereafter. Currently, he studies with Mingjiu Jiang 7p, who has taught many other star US Youth players. On Chiu’s own time, he does lots of tsumego and reviews professional games, along with playing and reviewing games on Tygem. Aside from go, he also enjoys playing the piano and violin, as well as swimming. When asked about his thoughts for the finals, Chiu told the EJ, “Albert is a very strong player, especially in the middle game, and I will need to be very careful. I hope that we will play good games in the finals.”

Albert Yen 7d, age 16, is from Chicago, Illinois, and is the defending champion in the Senior Division. He started playing go when he was 5 years old after watching Hikaru no Go and joining a local go club in Taiwan. Albert currently studies with Mingjiu Jiang 7p, and studies go by playing and reviewing slow, quality games when he has time. Yen is also a star track-and-field hurdler at his high school. While Yen fell to Chiu in the preliminaries, Yen told the EJ, “I think our strengths are very close. I don’t want to do anything too different to prepare for the finals, so I will just remain cool and trust my abilities during the games.”

Luoyi Yang 4d, age 12 is from Toronto, Canada, and placed first in the Junior Division preliminaries this year. She started playing go at the age of 4 at a local go school in China, where she studied with Ding Lie 6p, Wang Xiangyun 2p, and Wang Chenfan 4p, two afternoons a week before moving to Canada this past year. Outside of playing go, she enjoys playing the piano and singing.

Ary Cheng 4d, age 10, lives in Sunnyvale, California, and is the defending champion in the Junior Division. He started learning go at age 6 in a go class at a Chinese school, and was immediately drawn towards the game. Currently, he studies with Mingjiu Jiang 7p, and plays on IGS in addition to doing tsumego. When he is not playing go, he also enjoys playing table tennis. -Justin Teng, Redmond Cup TD. Photos courtesy of the players.

Last Monday, July 25th, the NOVA Go Club in Arlington, VA had a special visitor from China, Yang Shuang 2P. Ms. Shuang(right) visited the club on her way to next week’s US Go Congress in Boston. She played a demonstration game, followed by review, with Josh Lee 6D. “We thought Josh had a chance with two stones and the additional handicap of our guest’s 31-hour flight to the DC area that day,” says Garrett Smith, “But Josh resigned after an exciting game.”photo by Betsy Small

Elections for three regional and one at-large American Go Association board seats close July 30. Each full member and chapter should have received their ballots for an online voting site through their AGA email on file. Any questions contact elections@usgo.org.